Abstract:

The purpose of the present experiment is to explore which types of feature are integrated during learning of either two or three categories. In everyday situations, we learn categories composed of both features that we are able to associate with prior knowledge, and features that are isolated (rote features). In the experiment subjects learned two, and three categories, respectively. In the test phase there were presented pairs of features, and the subjects' task was to decide whether these feature-pairs were from the same category or different categories. The results suggest that better integration of features occur during simultaneous learning of more than two categories due to prior knowledge and impasses encountered in the process of learning.

Keywords: category learning, prior knowledge, integration of features